Laptop PC for Pro Tools 10

[Mikolaj1022]

I just recently got a PT10, installed on my home computer (Mac), tried to install on my laptop PC and failed. Having read other posts, I see that PC laptops, recommended for PT10, include Rain, Asus, not much more. I want to get a new laptop - I travel, use it for translations (run some CAT software) and would like to work on my songs on the road on PT10 as well (I use a Presonus Audiobox, good for travel, has worked well with the Mini, and my previous PC/Cubase setup).

So the questions is: how much to spend and on what? The latest posts on this (I have seen) are from February 2012. I would appreciate a good advice that is up to date.

Thanks

Nick

[albee1952]

What's wrong with a MacBook Pro? The new i7 quads run the heck out of Pro Tools You're already a Mac user, so that's 1 +, they have the best odds of working with a minimum of fuss and homework(+2), and I watched a demo of HD/Native with an i7 MBP, Magma mini chassis and Omni, running over 150 tracks, with dozens of plugins, all while showing a movie(session was a full surround movie production) at the 128 buffer...............need I say more?

[soybalm]

I have it running on a toshiba Satellite i3. I upped the ram to 6gigs from 4, The big performance factor on my laptop is that I run a Thermaltake eSata dock for 2 internal SATA drives. i get a huge track count. I wish I had an i5 but for 600 bucks, I did ok. The interface is a Motu 828 but only for the SPDIF clocked to a Mini Me. My setup defeats the whole purpose to having a laptop!
I have HD so I have that ram cache feature just in case but i was getting a huge track count compared to using drive C. 70 tracks maybe? 10 on drive C.
I also used the crappy little mic input which sounded pretty good and surprisingly quiet by using a Fishman pro EQ active preamp for acoustic guitars. It really matched the impedance well. The driver was ASIO 4 All but that worked better with other software. I would rather go the mac route if I could shell it out.

[QuikDraw]

I have to second albee1952's suggestion for a MacBook Pro. I just picked up a refurbished 15.4" 2.53 GHz i5 model from the Apple Store a couple weeks ago for $1289. It's a model that was current around mid 2010. It came with 4GB RAM, but I picked up an 8GB kit for around $40 locally (Apple wants $400!).

Runs PT9 great! Funny thing is, since I've been running PT9 on Win7 until now, all but one of my recording drives are USB2. Not good for Mac. So I loaded Win7 on a Boot Camp partition, and I've been running PT9 on the Windows side. This Mac Book Pro is the best PC I've ever owned! PT9 runs great on either the Mac or Windows side; doesn't seem to matter.

[scottee]

I am a complete newbie and am running PT10.2 on an Asus UX21E Ultrabook with Intel i7 2nd gen, 1.8GHz, 4GB RAM, MS Windows 7 64-bit SP1, with a USB hub, wireless mouse and keyboard and external monitor. I bought this laptop for travelling as it was the smallest and lightest Wintel laptop at the time. I think the only serious limitation is that the RAM is not upgradable. Over 2012 the 3rd gen Ivy bridge Intel processor laptops and Ultrabooks will become available which will be a little more powerful and be more energy/battery life efficient.

[EGS]

My HP laptop is running great. The i7 quad processor is powerful.

[albee1952]

Originally Posted by EGS

My HP laptop is running great. The i7 quad processor is powerful.

The only trick here is to get the exact same model. So all you PC laptop users that are having success, please include the exact model number(because plenty of other HP laptops won't work at all)

[EGS]

Originally Posted by albee1952

The only trick here is to get the exact same model. So all you PC laptop users that are having success, please include the exact model number(because plenty of other HP laptops won't work at all)

See sig below for model.

[soybalm]

the toshiba satellite was an A505 s6005 with extra ram and I used e sata port to a thermaltake esata drive caddy that holds internal desktop SATA drives. I easily got 70 tracks. I could have done more but I tested 70 for a couple of minutes.
I never need that many tracks but it's good to know that Esata is like the old SCSI bus with it's own system. The USB ports are ok with a few interfaces. I used a Syba TI firewire card that plugs into the express port. Again, would be nice to just have plugged it into an early model pc laptop with firewire native or a new mac. So many firewire ports on new pc desktops and laptops are useless now. If you go fire you should consider mac or an upper HP.

[unkJE]

Originally posted by dstryrwiz:
http://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=310668&page=3
#27 11-30-2011, 06:29 AM

Re: New Windows laptop for PT 10

Check out the Lenovo Thinkpad W520 (4276-37U) and buy a SIIG firewire express card.

(Cheers to: dstryrwiz + Avid + all the regular duc contributors + Groove3
+ how about a Knighthood for Russ Hughes from Pro Tools Expert.com)